


it's a hell of a feeling though

by moonmagicked



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, I felt robbed of this conversation in the show so I wrote it, Missing Scene, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-05-23 23:17:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14943191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonmagicked/pseuds/moonmagicked
Summary: Margo comes back to Brakebills from her vacation to Ibiza to find that everything has fallen to pieces in her absence—most importantly Eliot.





	it's a hell of a feeling though

**Author's Note:**

> Set in season 1 between episodes 9 & 10 (roughly). I know we're way past season 1 at this point, but I just got through rewatching the whole series through and I really wish we had seen Margo's reaction to coming back from her vacation and finding out everything that had happened while she was gone.
> 
> Sooooo I wrote it.

Quentin and Alice were sitting—lounging, if you could call it that, though their postures and their mood were a bit too tense for that to be a wholly apt description—in the common area of the Physical Kid’s cottage, a half-empty bottle of one of Eliot’s red wines between them, when the front door burst open.

“Mama’s back, bitches!”

It was unmistakably Margo’s voice. The  _ click clack _ of high-heels echoed in the room as she strode forward, dropping her designer bags onto the floor carelessly as she rounded on Quentin and Alice and stood in front of them, hands on her narrow hips and smirk on her red lips.

Quentin swallowed thickly and glanced at Alice, her eyes mirroring the dread he felt.

“What?” Margo asked after the pair had been silent for too long. “No hello? No, ‘we missed you, Margo! Welcome home, Margo!’?”

“Welcome home, Margo,” Quentin said, the words sounding thin even to his own ears. All he could think, looking at her, was  _ she doesn’t know, fuck, she doesn’t know yet. _

“Okay, seriously, you two look like someone took a shit in your wine. Who died or something?”

Alice, who had brought her wine-glass up to her lips at precisely the wrong moment, choked and spit out the mouthful of the liquid. Margo raised one perfectly-plucked eyebrow.

“What the fuck,” she said.

“Margo,” Quentin started. He took a deep breath and willed his trembling hands to still where they lay in his lap.  _ She doesn’t know yet _ his thoughts kept repeating on loop. “Margo... I think you should sit down.”

Dressed in cheerful colors and sparkling jewelry, skin bright with the afterglow of the sun, and hair in the sort of effortless curls only true saltwater could achieve, Margo looked stunning as ever and therefore wholly and completely out of place in the quiet gloom of the common area. She seemed to realize it then, too, because her lips drew together and her face pinched into a look of concentration that Quentin was only just starting to become familiar enough with to recognize was actually a mask.

“What’s going on?” she asked. Her eyes flitted around and the smallest glint of panic slipped into her expression as she asked, “Where’s Eliot?”

“Eliot’s upstairs,” Quentin assured her quickly. “He’s—”

Quentin cut himself off.  _ He’s fine _ , he had meant to say, but that wasn’t exactly true, was it. 

“You should really sit down,” Alice said. She sounded short, sharp, but Quentin knew that was just her manner. In her own quiet way Alice cared more about Eliot than even Quentin had initially realized. “Eliot’s okay, but…. Something happened that you should know about.”  
“Okay, I’m kind of starting to get a little scared here,” Margo said, though the tone of her voice betrayed nothing of the sort. Nonetheless, she took their advice and sat down in the chair across from them, legs crossed in front of her in an almost defensive gesture.

Alice pushed the wine bottle across the table closer to Margo. Margo eyed it, then took the hint, picking it up and taking a swig straight from the glass.

“Okay, spill,” she said then. “What in the high hell has you two looking like someone died.”

Quentin and Alice glanced at each other again and Margo made a sort of shocked squeal, a noise Quentin thought she’d likely have been embarrassed of in a different situation. He wisely chose not to comment on it.

It was a tense moment before Margo blurted out, “What, did someone actually fucking die?”

“No,” Quentin started to say quickly at the same time as Alice said, “Yes.”

At Margo’s stricken expression Quentin rushed to explain, the words tumbling out of his mouth before he could think them through, “Okay, yeah, kind of, I mean…. _ Yes _ . But not Eliot, I know that’s what you were worried about. Eliot’s fine. Well, okay, maybe not fine. He’s Eliot, y’know, it’s hard to tell with him? But he’s not like, hurt or anything, he’s okay—”

“Quentin, if you don’t shut the fuck up right now and tell me what the hell happened I am going to shove that bottle down your throat and then go find out myself,” Margo said, the words themselves sharp but the tremble in her voice betraying her nerves.

“It’s Mike,” Alice cut in. Margo’s eyes darted over to hers and Alice stared back evenly. “Except Mike wasn’t actually Mike. He was the Beast.”

A choked sound came out of Margo’s throat and Quentin watched as her hands clenched into fists against the folds of her skirt.

“He tried to kill me,” Quentin said. His voice shook a little—he had almost been killed,  _ again _ , it was getting to be beyond traumatizing at this point thank you very much—but he forced the words out anyway. He owed it to Margo, to  _ Eliot _ , to help explain what had happened. “But Penny got in the way and he got stabbed instead. It was a cursed blade, like what happened to Jane Chatwin in Fillo—that’s not important, sorry. Anyways, um, Penny’s fine now, we broke the curse.”

“Is Eliot…?” Margo trailed off, her silence asking all the questions for her.

Quentin had to look away. This was the hardest part to break to her. Thankfully, Alice stepped in again and spoke for him. She grabbed his hand and gave it a gentle squeeze as she spoke.

“Mike--the Beast--he killed someone. And he attacked the Dean and was going to kill him too, but Eliot stopped him.” Alice paused there and looked at Margo gently. “Margo… Eliot had to kill him.”

There was no mask up anymore to hide Margo’s expression of horror and heartbreak. Just pure, unfiltered pain. Quentin almost wanted to cry looking at her right then, because he knew what was going through her mind. There was no doubt that Margo knew about how Eliot had killed Logan when he was fourteen. She probably knew more about it than Quentin did. And if it was the first thing that Quentin had thought of when he heard what happened, it was no doubt the same thing that Margo was thinking of right now. That, and all the little cracks in Eliot’s own mask that Quentin was becoming increasingly privy to. The slips that betrayed that he wasn’t as put together and uncaring as he pretended to be. That he couldn’t kill someone and just be okay.

“Oh my god,” Margo said. Her voice cracked at the end of the word, fracturing sharply and quietly in a way that was physically painful to Quentin’s ears. “Oh my  _ god _ .”

Looking at her now, Quentin was struck with the overwhelming realization of just how much Margo loved Eliot. He knew it, of course. Everyone knew it, the two were essentially joined at the hip, twins of soul if not body. But knowing it and  _ knowing it _ , that was different. Quentin didn’t think he had ever seen so much raw emotion on Margo’s face as he did right then.

“How is he?” Margo asked at length. The  _ Margo _ mask she wore like makeup was gone, replaced by nothing but honest emotion. It made her look softer, more human, and Quentin thought he might hate it just a little.

“He’s—he’s Eliot,” Quentin said in way of answer, waving his hand in a sort of noncommittal gesture that could never hope to convey even a fraction of he meaning he meant it to, though he thought--hoped--that Margo might understand it’s meaning anyway. “He’s, y’know… he’s hard to read.”

“He seems… okay,” Alice said, adding her opinion in cautiously. Quentin didn’t think he agreed, but he didn’t interrupt as she continued. “He’s been drinking a bit more and been a bit… well,  _ ruder, _ than usual. But nothing alarming.”

Margo snorted, a sound that should have been amusing but was just kind of terrifying coming from her. Even honest, emotionally raw Margo was terrifying in her own way.

“Nothing alarming? Have either of you actually  _ asked _ how he’s doing?”

“I tried!” Quentin said quickly. He sounded defensive even to his own ears, but it was the truth. He had tried. Every part of him wanted Margo to know that and believe it. “But he’s… He’s  _ Eliot _ . He’s not exactly open with his feelings.”

“Which is exactly the problem, Quentin.”

Quentin opened his mouth, thought better of it, and closed it again. He looked away guiltily. He couldn’t exactly argue with her, not when she had a valid point.

“Where is he right now?” Margo asked. Her voice was clipped, pointed.

“In his room, I think,” Quentin said. He couldn’t meet her eyes.

“ _ Alone? _ ”

“He—He wanted to be left alone.”

“Yeah, and that’s exactly when he  _ shouldn’t _ be left alone.”

There was really very little that was more intimidating than a pissed-off Margo. And judging by increasing terseness of her voice, Quentin was sure she was rapidly getting closer and closer to blowing up at them.

“This isn’t our fault,” Alice said sharply. “We tried. You know Eliot better than anyone, so you know how stubborn he is. If he wants to be left alone, then there’s nothing we can do to change his mind.”

Margo glared at her for a long few seconds. Then all at once her body deflated, her limbs going slack as the tension flowed out of her.

“I know,” she said quietly, all the quiet fury in her voice gone. “I know. Just— _f_ _ uck _ .”

“I did try,” Quentin said. He couldn’t pinpoint exactly why it was so important to him that she understood that, but it was. “I promise, Margo. I tried. He just doesn’t want to talk about it.”

“I know, Q.”

She sounded sincere. Despite what he might have hoped, her words only fueled the guilt roiling in his stomach.

“You should talk to him,” Alice said. “If he’ll talk to anyone, it’s you.”

“Yeah,” Margo said flatly, “let’s hope.”

She sat there for a few more moments before she pulled herself up straight and set her shoulders up proudly. Quentin could see the exact moment that she pulled her face together into another mask, could pinpoint the moments her jaw flexed and lips drew together just so, her features molding into the perfect picture of aloofness and calm. 

Quentin thought he understood Margo just a little bit more in that moment.

“Well,” Margo said, her voice firm and much more Margo-like again all the sudden, “Let’s go assess the damage.”

She stood up, smoothed out her skirt, and proceeded to climb up the stairs without looking back at them. Quentin watched her go with guilt still roiling uneasily in his stomach.

“Do you think I should have tried harder?” he asked Alice quietly when Margo was out of their sight. “I know Eliot kept insisting he was fine, but maybe if I had pushed a little harder or tried more or— ”

“No,” Alice cut him off. She gave his hand another squeeze where it still lay in hers. “You know how Eliot is. There’s nothing more you could have done.”

“Right. You’re right,” Quentin said, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he didn’t try enough. “You’re right,” he said again, though it was but a whisper and even he couldn’t pretend he truly meant it.

A sudden shuffling of footsteps behind him startled both him and Alice. Quentin turned around with a jolt only to see a very stricken looking Todd standing there, suitcases in both hands.

“Todd! How, um, how long have you been standing there?” Quentin asked, startled.

“Umm, not long,” Todd said in the quietest voice Quentin had ever heard from him. “Only, um, the entire time.”

“Oh,” Quentin said in a soft breath.

“Yeah.”

They were all silent for a beat.

“I’m just gonna bring Margo’s bags upstairs for her,” Todd said quietly, before turning, Margo’s designer bags in hand, and scurrying up the stairs.

“I think we’re all going to need another drink,” Alice said after a moment. She reached across the table for the bottle of wine as Quentin nodded his assent.

**Author's Note:**

> The next chapter is going to be Margo and Eliot, and that's the interaction I'm especially excited to write and the one I was most disappointed not to get in the show. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
